


Appoggiatura

by emungere



Series: Hathaway's Heart [4]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Episode Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>ap·pog·gia·tu·ra</b><br/>n. Music<br/>An embellishing note, usually one step above or below the note it precedes and indicated by a small note or special sign. Italian, from appoggiato, past participle of appoggiare, <b>to lean on</b>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appoggiatura

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Dead of Winter with spoilers for that episode. Contains oblique discussion and thoughts of child abuse. 
> 
> Thanks very much for Louise for the beta and Brit-pick.

They leave Crevecoeur just before ten. The light is still creeping slantwise over fields and fences, brushing the edges of things into softness and stretching the shadows long in remembrance of night. James spends the drive back in a dozy haze, more relaxed than he'd thought would be possible ever again.

Dr Hobson showed up shortly before they left, ostensibly for the remains, but also to look James over with sharp eyes, tell him what an idiot he'd been, and ply him with pain medication. She and Innocent gave him a series of increasingly stern looks until he swallowed them down. Probably he has chemistry to thank for his current unshakable calm.

Nothing hurts. Not his arm, which surely should, and not his heart. He looks over at Lewis, and his head lolls against the headrest, chin retreating as is its wont into a number of unattractive folds of skin. He touches the scar on his jaw. It's an old one.

Lewis glances at him and snorts. "Look at you. High as a kite, you are."

"I'm not," he protests, head rocking a slow negative against the upholstery. "Kites have strings."

"What did Laura _give_ you?"

"They were..." He squeezes his eyes shut, remembering. "Big. And white. With writing."

"Yeah? What did the writing say, smart boy?"

"Pretty sure it was words. Tiny words."

"Writing that was words? Dunno, sounds pretty unlikely to me."

"You are mocking a wounded man." He waggles his sling in demonstration and then winces as a swift burst of pain finds its way through the fog of Dr Hobson's white pills.

"Stop that," Lewis tells him. He settles a hand on James' shoulder to make sure he's obeyed. It's unnecessary.

"I always do what you tell me," James points out.

There's nothing but road noise for a while. Lewis takes his hand away, and it leaves a warm patch that fades quickly into chill. James touches himself there and then rubs the side of his neck to disguise the gesture.

"You lied to me. Again," Lewis says.

James blinks slowly at Lewis's ear. "I'm good at lying. Not very good at telling the truth. No one likes to do things they're not good at."

Lewis sighs. "Close your eyes. Get some rest."

James obeys.

When he opens them again, he's in his own bed with no memory of walking there from the car. He's missing his shoes, socks, belt, and tie, but is otherwise fully dressed. The light through the curtains suggests it's late afternoon.

He weaves to the bathroom to relieve himself of excess liquid and then to the kitchen to fill up again with most of a carton of orange juice. He finds his phone - turned off - on the kitchen counter, with a note in Lewis's neat, square writing: _Soup in fridge._

There is, indeed, soup in fridge. It's lemon chicken from the Greek place he likes. Cold, it's gelatinous, and the rice studded throughout makes it look more like something he'd find at a crime scene than something he'd willingly eat. It still makes him smile. 

He texts Lewis his thanks rather than phoning, because it will annoy him more, and then he texts Dr Hobson. _What were those pills you gave me? I just woke up._

The reply comes moments later: _I'm not accustomed to my patients questioning my treatment._

He writes back: _The living are so tedious._

She replies: _Finally, someone who understands me._

He then receives a reply from Lewis, who has embraced text-speak because it means pressing fewer keys: _go back 2 bed :[_

James takes a shower and then drives to work. By the time he gets there, it's nearly seven. Lewis and Innocent have already gone home, and no one else with enough rank to do so cares enough to send him away.

He slogs through an hour of filing, cataloguing evidence, and stringing all of Lewis's paperclips together into a chain. His legs are wobbly by then. He drinks a glass of water, sits at his computer, and types out a letter of resignation that he knows he won't send.

Lewis asked him to stay, and so he will stay. He deletes the letter, shuts down his computer, and goes home to his soup.

*

For the next week, James devotes half his mind to his job and the other half to avoiding office gossip. He can't avoid the phenomenal weight of eyes on him, though Lewis sends him out on every errand he can think of, from follow-up interviews to coffee to fetching his dry cleaning. James is pathetically, silently grateful to be away from the station, even for five minutes at a time.

He's returning with cappuccinos when Innocent stops him in the hallway and gestures for him to follow her into her office. It reminds him of Father Michael's office at seminary, cool and smelling of clean air and plants. He sets the paper cups on her desk, folds his hands in his lap, and waits.

She frowns at him. "If I could think of a tactful way to say this, I would. Is he still angry with you?"

For a moment, James can't imagine who she means, except that 'he' is always Lewis these days unless otherwise specified. It takes him another two or three seconds to see the past few days from her point of view: it was probably the dry cleaning that forced her hand.

"No, he's not angry." He doesn't know how to explain Lewis's kindness in a way she'll understand and that will not require him to get counselling.

"I can speak to him if..." She lets the sentence trail off. Her eyes are confused, concerned, straining toward understanding.

He shakes his head. "I'm fine, ma'am. Thank you. We're both fine."

She lets him go, and he brings Lewis his coffee, now lukewarm.

"Do you know what pressing is?" he asks Lewis.

"It's what I do to my shirts on laundry day."

"Do you?" James spares only a second to affect surprise. "It was also a method of torture. A board was laid upon the man or woman, often an accused witch, and stones were piled upon it until a confession was extracted, or the victim was crushed to death."

Lewis sips his coffee and looks up at him. "Ever thought of writing one of those page-a-day calendars? Three hundred and sixty five cheerful facts from history?"

James releases some of his tension in a surprised breath of laughter and turns back to his work. He doesn't know if Lewis understands, but it's as close as he can come to telling him: every stone of speculation piled on him, Lewis is prying off again.

*

He can't avoid everyone forever. On Friday, DC Cantor catches him as he's coming out of the men's room. She's a steady, serious young woman with whom he normally gets on fairly well. She's not inclined to gossip, which makes it worse.

"I know maybe you don't want to talk about it, but I just wanted to tell you that you're not alone," she says. She presses a leaflet into his hand, squeezes it once, and walks away. The flyer is for a support group: adult survivors of sexual abuse.

James tosses it in the nearest bin and flees outside for a cigarette. In his latest attempt to quit smoking, he's not carrying them on him. He'll have to go back in and fetch them. Instead, he stands out in the cold and slaps his palm hard against the brick. It stings in a satisfying way, and so he does it again.

If Cantor is sure enough to be handing him literature, then the speculation is no longer merely speculation. People know what happened, or think they know. He wonders if Lord Mortmaigne has said something.

The horror of that thought creeps slowly through him and finally spurs him to retrieve his cigarettes, but as he turns to go back into the building, Dr Hobson bursts out of it, muttering under her breath.

"Some people just shouldn't be allowed," she says, pointing at James.

He nods gravely. "They ought to be banned. I have a list."

"I don't know how you used to work with that man."

"Detective Inspector Knox?"

"No wonder you snapped up Robbie the first chance you got. Do you know what I like about science?"

"Hard to argue with?"

"It's hard to--" She stops and narrows her eyes at him. "Right. What's wrong with you?" 

"I've left my cigarettes inside."

"Here." She produces one from her shirt pocket and hands it over. "For emergencies only. You look like one."

He feels like one as well, and so he takes it and lets her light it for him. He takes a long, long drag. His breath shakes on the exhale, but his hands are steady.

"I'm going to tell you what I told Robbie," she says. "Which is that people don't know how you feel unless you tell them. And now I'm going to get a large coffee and make every effort not to throw it in Knox's smug face. Excuse me."

She strides off and leaves James to smoke in peace, which makes her his favourite person in the world for the next five minutes.

*

During band practice that night, he's still thinking about what she said, both the advice and the implications. If she said that to Lewis, it's almost certainly why Lewis asked him (sort of) to stay. Lewis doesn't come out with things like that unprompted anymore than James does.

 _You lied to me. Again._ Of that drive home, he remembers only those words clearly through the fog of Dr Hobson's magic pills. He did. And Lewis forgave him. Again. Without discussion, without questions, and without reserve. James feels he owes him for that. Perhaps enough to venture a truth of his own.

The last notes are played. People shuffle sheet music into bags and instruments into cases. James sits with his fingers on his guitar strings and listens to the echoes of dry paper, dry comments from his fellow band members. One by one, they leave the honeyed warmth of the church and step out into blue-toned night.

There will be no questions, James knows. The last time Lewis was goaded into asking him anything remotely personal, James made him feel like a fool. The fact that James didn't do it on purpose only makes it worse: part of his nature rather than a deliberate aberration.

He plucks the strings one at a time. Their vibration catches the air with more of a hollow sound now that it is no longer baffled by so many bodies. Father Peter stands nearby. He's waiting to close up, waiting to go home, but equally waiting for him to speak; James isn't usually one to linger.

"You wanted someone to play the piano for your next service," James says. "I overheard you telling Ana. I can do it if you like."

Father Peter claps his delicate, blue-veined hands together and beams. "Oh, that's marvelous, thank you! I didn't know you played."

"I'm a bit rusty. Might need to stop by and practise in the week."

Father Peter assures him that he is welcome any time. There remains only to find the correct convergence of moment and circumstance.

*

It turns out to be eerily easy. He does genuinely need to practise, and that's what he's doing the very next night when Lewis stomps into the church.

"Are you deaf?" Lewis demands. "I rang three times!" He frowns. "I thought you played guitar, what's this?"

"It's a piano, sir. A stringed instrument originating in--"

"Hathaway." The warm light of the church turns the mist of rain on his hair to gold filigree. The creases around his eyes are half irritation and half curiosity.

"Sorry, sir." His phone lies on the bench beside him. It's on vibrate, but he should've felt it. Would've felt it, if his fingers weren't weighed down with lead at their tips, if every ounce of grace his playing once possessed hadn't deserted him.

Lewis comes to stand at one end of the bench. He drops his keys into his coat pocket and folds his arms over his chest. "You never said you played piano," he says. His voice is the casual, uninflected one he uses when he doesn't want to startle murderers.

"Since I was six."

"Six," Lewis repeats. It's barely a sound, like he's had the breath knocked out of him. He swallows visibly.

"I went to school on a music scholarship."

"Kept it up since then?"

"I switched to guitar as soon as that was an option."

Lewis understands. James can see it in the resolute blankness of his face, lax jaw muscles, drooping eyelids. It's the perfect semblance of a man who is not deeply shocked and upset by what he's just heard. Lewis is usually merely grim at crime scenes; he only looks like this at the ones that make James want to walk away from his job and never come back.

James rubs the pads of his fingers along the piano keys. He can feel the dip in their centers where the ivory has been worn down. He forces his breath to come and go at regular intervals. He's never told anyone before, not even in such an oblique way as this: a confession that only Lewis would recognise.

Lewis shifts. The keys jingle in his pocket. "Taking it up again?" he asks.

"They need someone to fill in on Sunday. Their usual pianist is out of town."

"Go on then."

"Isn't there a dead person waiting for us?"

"He's not likely to get worse."

"Dr Hobson doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"Dr Hobson is not liking it even as we speak. I've had three texts so far."

James fights to keep a smile off his face. "Hadn't we better go then, sir?"

"I think we can spare five minutes to hear you not be perfect at something. Go on."

James sets his fingers to the keys with purpose. He plays the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 5. It was one of his favorites, once upon a time. Despite the vivid sensation of his bare feet on the summer house floor, despite the overbearing memory of lilacs and the crescent shaped scar on his chin, it still is. He doesn't play it perfectly, but he gets through it.

"How long has it been?" Lewis says, into the silence that rushed to fill the gap left by the music.

"About five minutes. I was practicing it just before you came."

"You know what I mean."

James slides the lid shut. "Fifteen years, more or less."

"You're very good," Lewis says quietly.

"I used to be better."

"You don't have to be perfect at everything."

"So I've been told." James stands, pockets his phone, picks up his coat. "Shall we go?"

"Right. You can explain to Dr Hobson why we're late."

"I shall treasure the opportunity, sir."

Lewis settles his hand on James' shoulder as they walk out. It stays there, more or less, until they arrive at the scene.

A man has been drowned in an ornate iron birdbath. He is naked from the waist up, and his long, pale arms stretch down on either side. His fingertips just brush the grass. Dr Hobson kneels beside him.

She looks up as they approach. "Where have you two been?" she says, with less ire than James was expecting.

"It's my fault," he tells her. "I was at practice, didn't hear my phone."

"Practice?"

"He's in a band," Lewis says.

She raises her eyebrows. "Mild mannered detective sergeant by day, rock god by night?"

Lewis shakes his head. "Jazz and elements of medieval madrigals," he says, solemnly.

"Ah," Dr Hobson says. "And my world makes sense again."

"We're playing in Oxford next weekend," James says. "You two ought to come. I'll get you tickets."

Dr Hobson looks pleased. Lewis looks panicked.

"Don't worry, sir," James says. "I'm sure it'll work out better than Barry Manilow."

He leaves Lewis trying very hard not to explain that to Dr Hobson and goes to look at a scattering of powder he spotted by the garden path on their way in. He bends over it. It's the color of pale skin and scented heavily with lilacs.

He rubs a finger over the scar on his jaw. He was ten. He'd threatened to tell his parents. Not for the first time, but for the first time, he'd meant it. The blue and white porcelain vase missed him, but it broke against the wall, and a shard rebounded and stuck fast in his skin. It quivered with each breath, an alien, fluttering pain that made him afraid he would be sick.

Fat drops of blood massed at the point of his chin and dropped into the mess of water, pottery, and crushed blossoms on the floor. Lord Mortmaigne carried him outside so he wouldn't cut his feet. James remembers standing on pine needles and trying to think up a lie his parents would believe.

"Hathaway!" Lewis bellows. The last syllable has a faintly plaintive upward swing, as if Lewis is baffled not to find James already at his elbow. "Stop woolgathering and get over here."

James will tell him about the powder. They will go back to the station, where everyone knows, or thinks they know, a part of James that he meant to take to the grave with him. They will make assumptions, will look at him and think: _Oh, that's why_ , as if this one thing explains and defines him.

The thought is, surprisingly, not unbearable. It filled him with dread throughout the case and, off and on, for years beforehand, but now that the reality of it is here, presenting him with flyers and horribly sympathetic looks, he finds that this, too, is something he can survive.

He goes to kneel beside Lewis and listen to Dr Hobson's description of the man's death. He has drowned in three inches of murky water. A stone bird on the edge of the bath has left an impression on his face: one cheek is marked with the smooth curve of a stone wing.

It never occurred to James that Lewis might file away all his oddities with this one new piece of information and mark his case closed. Lewis doesn't do that to people. He judges, sometimes harshly, but he doesn't stop listening or looking, doesn't miss it when people become more than they were.

*

The weekend approaches with the speed and inevitability of Death, if Death drove a Ferrari instead of, as Emily Dickinson suggested, a carriage. Of course, Ms Dickinson died well before the advent of high-powered sports cars, so she might have reconsidered, but James suspects that, while a Ferrari might hold her and Death, Immortality would have a tough time squeezing into the back. 

He looks at his computer screen. He has typed _Ferrari_ into the space on the form where the suspect's name is meant to go. He deletes it. It's been like this all week. 

Today is Friday. On Saturday, the band is playing at Carbon. James doesn't like playing in Oxford. There is always the chance of someone he knows being in the audience. This time the chance is a certainty. 

He likes Dr Hobson. Obviously, he likes Lewis. Nudging them in each other's direction is not, on the face of it, a terrible idea. Inviting them to watch him play and thus fulfilling one more personal nightmare was not, perhaps, the best way to go about it, especially given the venue. 

Carbon is not the sort of place the band usually plays. Carbon books up-and-coming rockers, acts that are loud and upbeat, or loud and despairing, or just loud. It has a lounge area cordoned off with a curtain of chains hanging from the ceiling. It is, to be brief, too cool for them. 

Despite reassurance from the manager, James suspects they may be in over their collective heads. And he can't get drunk because Sunday morning he needs to be at the church for morning service where he will play the piano in front of an audience for the first time since he left school. 

He glances up and down the hall and then takes out his mobile. A brief chat with the manager of Carbon reassures him not at all, but at least he's able to arrange to pay for Lewis and Dr Hobson's dinner. He's seen the prices, and he can just about hear Lewis's outrage at the very concept of paying eleven pounds for a burger. 

"What was that?" Lewis says, appearing with unnatural stealth just behind his right shoulder. James pushes the call end button and stuffs his phone into his pocket. 

"Nothing, sir. Personal call."

"Carbon? That's where your band's playing, isn't it?" 

James nods. Did he even say Carbon out loud? Did Lewis hear the other end of the conversation? See the caller ID? Acquire psychic powers?

"You." Lewis pokes him in the chest and pushes past into the office. "You've gone well past far enough setting me up with Laura. Don't think you're paying for it too." 

"Not at all, sir. The manager was just assuring me that guests of the band can get dinner on the house, but drinks I'm afraid you'll have pay for yourself. And fetch them on your own. I'll be a bit busy." 

"You're hilarious, you are. Sure you're not doing stand-up at 'Carbon'?" The air quotes around Carbon make Hathaway smile. He's pretty certain Lewis wasn't a big air-quoter before they met. 

"Ventriloquism, actually. I'm only missing a dummy." James raises his eyebrows in inquiry. "I'm sure Dr Hobson would be suitably impressed." 

"Spent enough years of my life with Morse's hand up my backside making me squawk, thanks, I'm not having it from my sergeant as well." 

James stares. He has no comeback for that. 

Lewis glances at him when the silence has achieved sufficient gravity to draw his gaze. "Metaphorically," he adds. 

"Yes, sir," James says gravely, and they settle down to work again. 

*

Halfway through setting up on stage at Carbon, Luke mentions that his father was in the Army with the club's manager, which explains a lot. James' heart sinks another inch or two toward his shoes. He suggests, at least, a change in their set list, but they don't have the music for it and, "Not everyone has it off by heart like you, Jamie," Lily says. 

She won't call him James because, she has told him, then they'd be James-and-Lily, like Harry Potter's parents, and they'd have to get married. Ha, ha. He tells her he'll be sure to practise less in future.

The gig is a disaster. 

The performance is fine, not top-notch, but above their average, and their average is quite good. The audience simply doesn't know what to make of it. They haven't come for music that makes them think. They've come to eat overpriced burgers and get drunk on very expensive whiskey and brands of vodka they've never heard of. 

Scattered applause and confused murmuring follow each song, but not much more. Except for one table, front and centre to the stage. Lewis' applause is heavy and undeterred by the silence that surrounds it. Dr Hobson grins and wolf-whistles. 

After _Chaconne for the Wives of Jupiter_ , Luke leans over and whispers, "Who're the two lunatics, do we know them?" 

"I do."

"Your parents?" 

"My friends," James says. 

Having them here should make it worse, embarrassment compounded by witnesses. But it doesn't. The band plays for nearly an hour, and Lewis and Dr Hobson are as enthusiastic over the last song as the first. Of course, so is the rest of the audience, but even so, James finds himself with a smile he can't shake. 

Silent, mutual consent decrees that there will be no second set, and James tucks his guitar into her case. He's about to exit into the pungent alley behind the club, when a hand falls on his shoulder and Lewis says, "Gotcha." 

"Am I under arrest?" 

"Yeah, on charges of sneaking off and not having a drink with us like I knew you would. You don't have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in front of Laura. Now come on, I already ordered for you." 

James glances sideways at him, immediately suspicious. "What am I having?" 

"It's called Guns for Nuns."

"Oh, Christ," James says. 

Lewis pats his back and gives him a push. "I got you a scotch egg, too."

"You're too kind, sir." 

When they get to the table, Dr Hobson _hugs_ him. It's a brief, manly sort of hug, and she slaps his back like she's trying to clear his lungs. It's over before he can think to do anything about it. 

"That was really nice, James," she says. 

"Er, thank you," he replies, too surprised to brush off the compliment. She even looks like she means it. He's looking toward Lewis before he can remind himself that he doesn't want to know what Lewis thinks. This is not Lewis's kind of music. 

"Not sure I fancy all that odd singing," Lewis says. 

"You like opera. You like _Wagner_."

"Morse liked Wagner." Lewis picks up James' Guns for Nuns, takes a sniff, makes a face, and sets it carefully back down. "I liked the bit where you were playing on your own." 

A waiter arrives with a scotch egg on a bed of micro greens and a small pile of raw sweet corn kernels. It's still better than attempting to answer Lewis. James' face is warm, and he hopes it's just a leftover from the scorching stage lights. 

He picks up his drink and swallows half of it in one go. It burns his throat and leaves a faintly bitter, yet cloying, aftertaste. He gives Lewis a betrayed look. 

"Tequila, disaronno, and lime juice," Lewis provides.

"Is this revenge? You didn't have to come." 

"Nah. Revenge is me coming to listen to you play piano on Sunday." 

James tenses slightly and does not glance at Dr Hobson. Telling Lewis about the piano and...all the rest of it is one thing. Telling anyone else, even Dr Hobson, is quite clearly impossible. "You do realise that will involve going to church and sitting through the service, sir?" he says. 

"You play piano as well?" Dr Hobson asks. 

"I used to. I'm only filling in. Their normal pianist is away." 

Lewis drops his eyes briefly and rubs a finger against his forehead. He bellows to a nearby waiter and orders James a beer in apology. He and Dr Hobson need refills, and the talk changes to the safer topics of expensive alcohol and Dr Hobson's next concert. 

*

On Sunday morning, James realises that the last time he played piano in a church, he was still at Crevecoeur. He pulls over to the side of the road and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. He reaches for his phone to text Lewis, but he doesn't know what to say. 

He could tell Lewis not to come. That he'll make it worse. Which is possible. He could tell him to wait outside. He could tell him the service has been cancelled. That Sunday has been cancelled and they've got a fresh body. That would be ideal. He glances hopefully at his phone, but it is silent. 

He rests his chin on the steering wheel. Outside, a father tows an unwilling child across the street. The girl has a red dress with white polka dots, and her hair is breaking free of its plaits and ribbons. Whisps of it catch the sun like a saint's glory. She looks just like Scarlett at that age, but all happy children look alike. 

You're not one of us, she said. Thank God, he thinks, and pulls out into traffic. 

When James pulls up, Lewis is waiting at the church door with a furtive look and his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. 

"I was never Catholic even before I..." He trails off and rubs at his mouth. 

"Started being snappy about God? Never mind, you can sit at the back." 

He sits Lewis down next to Mr Garber and Mrs Finglenod, who should be able to distract him thoroughly from any lingering snappishness about God, or the church, or James' playing. 

The piano is open and ready for him, and his fingers fit easily into the concave keys. He stares down until all he can see is black and white, and when he raises his eyes to the music, it's all black and white there as well. He waits for his cues, and he plays the pieces set for him. He looks neither left nor right.

Time is compressed, and the only thing he's truly aware of is the need to move forward through the music, the dry paper against his cold fingers, the way the staff curls with the bend of the page. When it's over, he sits and waits. Various people come to tell him that they enjoyed his playing, and at last Lewis comes to collect him.

They walk down the aisle side by side. Father Peter stops them at the door to thank James once again, shake his hand, and look upon Lewis with inquiry. 

"Father Peter Bedford, Robbie Lewis," James says. He will not assign Lewis a relationship or attempt to explain his presence to the priest. He cannot explain it to himself. He wonders if this is something colleagues do, if Lewis would've done this for Morse. 

Lewis and Father Peter unite in praise of James' playing and then part ways abruptly when Father Peter asks if Lewis will be back next week and Lewis declares himself an atheist. It seems an opportune moment to make their escape. 

Outside, Lewis grumbles: "Did you see his face? Like I'm the bloody moneylender in the temple, or Judas at the last supper. Just came to see you play, never asked him for a how-to pamphlet on getting close to my lord and saviour." 

"Let's get coffee," James suggests. 

"Did you listen to anything I just said?" 

"A cappuccino, I think. And a raspberry scone." 

Lewis rolls his eyes and plods along beside him. 

They settle at an outside table. Lewis brings the coffees. 

"Did you and Dr Hobson have a nice time at Carbon?" James asks brightly. 

"She was going to get us separate rooms," Lewis says. "When we went to that opera. She told me after. So you can just stop, right?"

"I don't know what you mean, sir." 

"Don't know, hell. The bow and the oversized nappies don't suit you." 

"The fat, flying baby is a relatively modern depiction. Cupid was traditionally represented as a naked youth. Exposed as love bares the heart." 

"Is that so?" Lewis' coffee cup obscures his mouth, but his eyes are fixed on James'. 

"Yes, sir." James takes a swift, burning swallow of his cappuccino. His mouth carries on without his brain. "C.S. Lewis wrote a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth called _Till We Have Faces_. Psyche's elder sister convinced her to finally look upon the face of her husband, the god. In seeing the truth, she lost all chance of happiness." 

"That bad, was he?" 

"Aren't we all?" 

"No," Lewis says. He sets his cup down with a solid thunk of thick china. "Not everyone." 

"She was intended as a sacrifice, but he made her his bride. He came to her every night in darkness. Would you have lit the lamp?" James' hands are wound around his cup. It's too hot, but he can't let go. 

"'Course I would. I'm a copper. Always got to know."

"Even if it cost you everything?" 

"Even if." Lewis takes James' cup from him and sets it down on the saucer. "Are you watching the football later?" 

The conversation turns to other things, but on the solitary walk back to his car, James' mind rounds up his words and chases them in circles until they curl back on themselves like music on a bent page. He feels as if he were talking to himself more than to Lewis, but he doesn't know what he was trying to say. Perhaps, someday, he can get Lewis to translate for him.


End file.
